


The Human Heart

by hedda62



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Amazonian Fauna, Domesticity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-19
Packaged: 2017-11-19 01:38:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedda62/pseuds/hedda62
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Reese is feeling domestic.</i>  Reaction shot to 2x06 "The High Road" and 2x07 "Critical," with booze and cocoa.  This is the closest to fluff I get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Heart

A jaguar lies motionless behind a tree in the Amazon rainforest, waiting for its prey, heartbeat slowed to resting pace but ready to speed up at the crack of a twig, the rustle of wary passage, the self-betrayal of the deer or caiman or odd little capybara. And then the twitch and spring of muscles doing what they're told, the impact, the quick kill, the knife-edge teeth piercing the brain, tearing at the throat. The hot blood filling the mouth.

Reese is feeling domestic. He's spent the evening in the loft, defrosting a chicken breast and throwing together a quick stir-fry, and now he's watching public TV while he eats. Biting at bland white meat dowsed in soy sauce, at peppers and carrots and water chestnuts, he stares at the jaguar and empathizes, though unfortunately he knows how the capybara feels as well.

Danger is lurking, and his instinct is to lurk right back at it: to breathe down its neck, to prowl in the shadows of the city that never sleeps. But he is actually sleepy tonight, and long experience has taught him to value that, to seize the night (or the mid-afternoon or the twenty minutes before an op or even the five minutes Finch takes to download miraculous amounts of data on a new number). And he wouldn't know where to start lurking, so waiting for the danger to find him, if it so wishes, is the only course of action that makes sense.

It isn't quite the jaguar's strategy, although it's a most fascinating creature. He's found himself watching the birds on the screen just as intently, however: so many of them, so glorious in their plumage. Harold Macaw, he thinks. Harold Parakeet. He'd like to dress his boss up in those bright rich colors, in a feathered cloak or a bold headdress, royal and commanding and exotic. Though he can't imagine Finch would want birds to die so he could be magnificent. He'd prefer to... tuck a new handkerchief into his pocket or something.

There are times Reese wants to tuck Finch into his pocket, and keep him there, safe and surrounded. He cannot, _cannot_ think that way; he is both a sword and a shield but he can't be everyone's suit of armor too. Everyone's... armadillo shell. All he can do is advise caution, as he's done (probably uselessly) to Carter, and then try to be there when he's needed; and eventually, one day, he'll be there too late. He thinks, hopefully, of Bear; and then watches jaguars leaping from behind trees and sees ruthless bullets and explosions and torn, fractured flesh and bone.

Consumed by meditations on disaster, he startles so hard at the knock on the door that the last few bites of his dinner fly off the plate. He won't need to pick them up; the more rational part of his reflex brain has already recognized the pattern of the knock, and he can hear the snuffling too now. Of course he checks the peephole nonetheless; a fisheyed Harold stares back at him.

When they're inside, Harold takes Bear off the leash, and the dog makes straight for the bit of chicken and onion on the floor – Reese wishes he had a nose that good – then flops down on the bed they keep here in case Reese needs to disguise himself as a dog owner again. "Well, come on in," he says to Bear's collapsed body; the tail thumps. Despite appearances, there's a jaguar tension there, but the dog has yielded guard duty to a superior officer until called upon.

"And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?" Reese asks, pleased to rediscover that he means it, and that Finch knows he does.

"I need a drink," Finch announces. Of all the aspects of Finch that Reese has come to cherish over time, the rarely-glimpsed introvert-drama-queen persona is one of the most captivating; it's like spotting a gaudy parakeet lurking in an office cubicle. He doesn't grin, or ask for an explanation; he just waves Finch toward the bar. It's a well-stocked bar, all Finch's doing, and Reese has barely touched the many bottles. He appreciates greatly that Finch trusts him not to overindulge; like so much else in the loft, like the loft itself, the bar is practical camouflage and symbolic gesture in one.

Tonight, Finch eschews the Laphroaig and the cabernet franc and goes straight for tequila. Reese waits till he's downed the first one to say, "Something on your mind, Harold?"

He still expects a ruffling of the feathers and a dismissive "I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Reese," but even Finch must realize that he's come a little far to drop in for a shot of booze and leave without unburdening himself. "Harold?" he prods again; Finch is pouring another drink.

"The human heart, John," he says; and it's _John_ now, is it? "I can't" – he swallows, and then he swallows his tequila. "I can't stop seeing it. Everytime I close my eyes. It's not the blood, or the... the squishiness; it's... she reached in, she touched it, she... made it work again. And I held his chest open while she did it. It was... not so impossible as I thought it would be."

Reese leaves alone _I'm so proud of you, Harold_ ; he leaves alone _I don't think they'll let a dead man apply to medical school._ Like a jaguar, knowing where to bite, he zeroes in on, "And you wish it was really that easy?"

Finch just gives him a wild-eyed stare and pours himself another glass. "Whoa, there," Reese says; this is looking like turning into another _ask me anything_ session and he doesn't think he could play the honorable gentleman this time. "Take it slow. That stuff has an unbelievable kick." It's the very brand he and Jessica had ordered to their room on that memorable holiday, not that they ever got around to drinking much of it.

"I'll do what I like, Mr. Reese," and good, the ruffled Finch is making an appearance. "But please don't let me interrupt your evening's agenda." He glances at the TV; Reese had automatically muted the sound on rising, but left the picture up. There's a jaguar, tearing at entrails; then a snake sliding along a tree branch, heading for the eggs in a nest. The parent birds fly at the snake, flap their wings, peck at its eyes. _Ah, domesticity._ One of them is bright-colored, the other dull and muted; the voiceover has already told Reese that the females are less likely to be showy. It could be the opposite with humans; or, more accurately, it could be that there are two kinds of people, those who want to be seen and those who don't.

The snake retreats; the birds fuss and preen their feathers. "How would you like a hat with a plume in it, Harold?" Reese says.

Finch doesn't answer; he takes his drink to the couch but when he gets there he turns off the TV. It's an abrupt and promising contradiction to his earlier politeness. "Well, I think I'll join you," Reese says; he pours himself a finger of whisky and strolls over. He's not at all sleepy anymore; nevertheless, he yawns as he sits down. It seems a reassuring gesture, especially since he chooses to sit pretty close to Finch. He thinks it may be something predators do, to put those observing them at ease.

"Don't let me keep you from your bed," Finch says.

"You're not. It's a very comfortable bed," and because that sounds a little more directly like an invitation than he wants it to, he adds, "Thank you. The one in the Far Rockaway house was a little squishy for my taste, by the way. Very nice otherwise; the headboard shelf fit the Glock perfectly."

"And what did Ms. Morgan think of it?"

"We didn't actually _sleep_ in the same bed, Harold."

Finch gives him the eye-glint the non-answer deserves, but nothing more. Reese wants to hiss out _ask me;_ he wants to batter Finch with details, true or not: _she likes her mattresses soft and her men hard._ But of course he doesn't say anything; Zoe is a very private person, too.

"I can stay up all night if you need me to," he says instead; he'd said that to Zoe, too. "Though we'd better start drinking coffee if that's the plan." He can see Harold in his mind's eye: asleep on the couch with his mouth open and his body sagging to one side. He can see him in the bed, too, or with his head in Reese's lap while some dreadful sci-fi flick plays on the TV in the middle of the night. He should have stayed single out in the suburbs, twitching at every doorbell and lawnmower, snarling at Girl Scouts; he shouldn't have given himself protective coloration or let the jungle of the human heart wrap its vines around him, guiding Amy out of the park, watching Graham choose not to run away from his past. Even a skin-deep marriage promotes domestic urges, while the witnessing of bone-deep love, of battles of devotion and honor and the heart beating in the open chest… no wonder they're both here, slowly negotiating a way to curl up together, like a bird and a jaguar struggling against reason and instinct.

Birds, he seems to recall from some other program he watched, holed up in a motel somewhere, are related to dinosaurs, sharing a branch of some great family tree. There's a cold-eyed fierceness to birds that he admires, a T. rex lurking even in the little ones, the sparrows and wrens and finches. Harold, for all his ruffle and endearing absurdities, is the opposite of soft, too aware of what it means to be predator and prey at the same time to ever truly let his guard down. He can't flop down in the bed or behind the tree and allow his muscles to go slack, knowing they'll respond when he needs them to. His heart needs to beat fast and ready all the time. Reese wants, more than he's ever wanted anything, to slow it down (and then speed it up again, but that is asking too much). How to say it, though: _let me calm you, Harold; let me gentle you; let me help you to forget, and to remember._

"Let me help," he says, and when Finch stares at him, "There has to be a reason you came here tonight, besides the free booze and the fine Corinthian leather you're not even letting yourself lean into. A reason you came to me. What can I give you? Conversation, confession, psychotherapy? A back massage. A hug."

The last is a desperate, self-revealing joke; he's astonished when it's the option Finch chooses. Or, he thinks as he takes the forward-tilting body into his arms, maybe it's just the easiest of hard choices: easier for Finch than talking about whatever's bothering him. Well, he's already said it all: _the human heart._ A large topic, and a small one; a dinosaur and a bird. There's no sense to that, but holding Harold against him is lessening his ability to make sense. Just holding, for now, nestling closer a fraction of an inch at a time, hoping that the closeness won't suddenly be taken from him by an abrupt withdrawal and a _thank you, Mr. Reese_ that he can't countermand with anything less than… the thought of a kiss is intoxicating. Kissing Zoe was like drinking black coffee in quantity, both of them sober and working to get the job done and having a hell of a lot of fun in the process. Kissing Harold would be like gulping down sweet earthy tequila memories, like closing his eyes and letting every creature in the jungle creep up behind him, like cutting his chest open and letting someone touch his heart. He aches for it and he dreads it and…

…and it's already too late, because his lips have met Harold's skin behind the ear, and again beneath it, and he's given himself away quite thoroughly, so he might as well tickle his mouth with the sideburns and kiss a line along the jaw and…

"Mr. Reese," Harold breathes, and then, louder, reprovingly, "John." Reese takes his mouth from the corner of Harold's; he doesn't feel it would be a good idea to meet his eyes yet. "As I recall you offered… a hug" -- he says it like it's a foreign but oddly attractive thing, a samovar or a pashmak or a bazouki -- "but this--"

"You don't usually warn people ahead of time that you mean to take advantage of their vulnerable dignity. Unless you have better manners than I do, that is." And now he manages to sit back and take in the picture of Harold, flustered and faintly pink. "I'm sorry. Apparently I still have a little problem with impulse control. Like the times I end up kneecapping someone when I don't strictly need to."

"Well, it felt much more pleasant than I imagine that would." A joke and a gentle admission; together with the pinkness they give Reese a second's hope, immediately dashed. "I think I had better be going, however."

"Please don't go." It sounds vaguely threatening, like so much that comes out of his mouth, as if any second he'll pull the Glock out from under the couch and use it to balance the negotiation in his favor. He consciously shifts his tone; pleading will sound satirical, so he goes for the solemnity of prayer. "I promise to be good. I won't do it again."

"If I stay," Finch says tightly, "I may end up wishing for you to do it again."

They stare at each other; it's an absurdly tense moment. Jaguar and parakeet; dinosaur and tiny jaguar ancestor. Finch looks like he's going to be sick, and Reese is running over symptoms of everything from incipient stroke to aftermath of Stockholm Syndrome when the color comes back into the pale face and Finch, amazingly, starts to laugh.

"It really _is_ that easy," he says when he's released a few near-hysterical chuckles. "Getting it started again. Or not easy, but… inevitable. There's just such _perseverance_ to it. Such stubborn, gutsy… well, not gutsy, one really can't--"

"Harold. What are you talking about?"

"The human heart, John. Of course the brain is the seat of love, really; of all the emotions as well as of rational thought, but as far back as Galen, I believe--"

"Are you saying you love me?"

"I think I must be. Is that a vulnerability you wish to take advantage of, Mr. Reese?"

It's as clear a come-on as the two-word invitation Zoe offered him, as blunt and as fierce. He wants to throw his head back and expose his throat to the jagged, rending bite; he wants to stroke Harold to gentleness and bundle him into his pocket; he wants to do unspeakably exciting things to his naked body. Though… not tonight. He's still inclined to get some sleep tonight, and he's really rather good at taking his time, when he has time to take. Starting where he left off, he kisses the corner of Harold's mouth, and then the opposite side, and then full-on, slow and delicious and thorough. Vulnerability really tastes more cabernet franc than tequila, he decides, despite the lingering hint of the latter on Harold's tongue. But he doesn't care to drink either.

When he feels the neck muscles relax against his supporting hand, he smiles into the receptive mouth, says, "Wait here," and, his body responding to need, rises to go into the kitchen.

Of course Harold doesn't wait there; it's against his nature. "I'm making cocoa," Reese says to the rustling noise behind him, as he gets out the pan and opens a cupboard. "Sorry, I don't keep milk in the fridge, not here enough to drink it before it goes bad, so it'll have to be canned. Top-quality cocoa, though. But no marshmallows, either." He can feel Harold shudder a little. And then the claws click on the floor and Bear is with them, because they are in the kitchen and that means food may be on offer.

He pours and spoons and heats and reaches for the whisk, and all the time he can sense eyes on his back, wanting and wondering. "Cocoa," he says finally when it's poured into the mugs (only two mugs; he apologizes silently to the dog). "Do you want it straight up," he asks Harold, "or shall we add something?"

They argue pleasantly about the right way to spike cocoa, John standing by the choice of bourbon while Harold advocates brandy. Finally, Harold splashes some fine cognac into his mug, takes a swig, snaps out, "Try this, Mr. Reese," and kisses him.

"You may have a point, Mr. Finch," John says when he's done tasting, grinning inwardly at the notion that this is their new medium for settling differences. They take their cocoa to the couch, flip through the cable offerings. There really isn't anything good on, and they end up back on public TV, watching some idiot blather on about Mongolia. John interjects a few comments based on his recent minibus and boat journeys. Harold is murmuring "he on honey-dew hath fed" when he falls asleep against John's shoulder.

John wakes up what must be, from the stiffness in his muscles, some hours later, with Harold's head in his lap, Bear's head across his feet, and an old black-and-white movie on the TV. Two vaguely familiar people are singing to a jaguar. No, a leopard, apparently; Reese can't tell the difference. _I can't give you anything but love, baby._ It's a ridiculous song, he thinks, stroking Harold's hair. Love is all very well, but there are so many other things to give: a closet full of guns; sencha and cognac and memories; top-quality cocoa; useful and miraculous things to do, with hands to do them with and a comforting disembodied voice in the ear, though voices with bodies attached are even better. Firm mattresses, on which to do things with the bodies. The human heart makes a great gift, although having received one in the mail once, insufficiently wrapped and leaking, he is cautious about accepting unsolicited packages.

He watches on into the night, wild leopards tamed by song and dinosaur skeletons falling to ruin, and even laughs a few times, gently so as not to disturb Harold's rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Coleridge ("Kubla Khan") and "Bringing Up Baby."


End file.
